Fun and Frustration With Dreams

The other night I was having a pleasant dream. I was playing basketball with some other kids (I myself was age-regressed to adolescence) on an outdoor court. We played the game on a higher level than I was accustomed to when I was younger. I played point guard, setting up plays, passing, and shooting. The game was competitive and fun, with a lot of good-spirited teamwork going on. As often (or usually) is the case with dreams, this dream drifted away from the game to other themes. Later on, though, I drifted back in my dream to another basketball game. I expected a repeat of the earlier game’s fun. Only this time, instead of the fun, there was only frustration. Shots didn’t fall, passes were stolen, and the opposing team ran all over us. What happened?

I’m coming to the conclusion that dreams (at least for me) have a self-regulating mechanism akin to a thermostat. If a dream is too “happy”, then actively seeking to duplicate that effect within a dream will lead to frustration instead. This may be an important “good” done to prevent me from using dreams as an escape from wakefulness and interaction with reality.

It happens too often to ignore: I seek some goal within a dream and then obstacles continually arise to block its attainment. Or I’ll realize that I can do something cool like flying and, before I can really begin to fully enjoy the experience, I wake up. It sure would be fun to be able to use dreams to have my innermost-held wishes granted, without having to endure their sometimes negative consequences in reality.

In J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, young Potter is sneaking around Hogwarts Academy (against the rules, naturally) when he stumbles upon a large mirror that shows any observer whatever deepest desires (s)he has. The danger is that the mirror becomes so attractive and pleasant that the observer spends more and more time in front of it while abandoning the real, present world. In like manner, dreams could also be like Rowling’s Mirror of Erised were it not for that instinctive self-regulation!